16-01-2015, 09:50 PM
Hi Martin
Firstly I will apologise to you as reading back on my post now I was a bit direct and some of my wording could have been a bit better toned. I felt a bit overly passionate on my points, please accept my apologies. Chess players on this forum is similar to football players on twitter, sometimes best not to type away and hit the enter button and stop for a moment of reflection.
Re the Edinburgh FIDE Congress, I am a bit baffled as I have been told by 2 different high ranking, council members it was losing money and that it nearly never went ahead for this year. I also recall last years prize money being relatively generous 1st+2nd in the Open took away £400 each. I am wondering it is the stand alone tournamentl accounts you are referring to, or the CE accounts for the year, as I am aware CE have good cash reserves and rake in a lot from league fees etc. They probably won't appreciate us getting into this detail as I know they like to keep these matters in-house which I think is fair enough.
I do not argue with what you say however, as if you are on the CE board you are more clued up than myself and I will stand corrected if I have the financial facts wrong. I also have not bothered to look at any minutes for a long time and have seen no accounts.
I think George and myself are on the same page in that we seem to both be looking at the trend and if you can visualise the graph and the decline, that's why we are concerned. I do feel it is not a great time to be a chess player in the East. George is right in a previous point that chess could be considered cheap and relatively affordable, but thats only if its local, i.e. without the high travel costs, accommodation costs and eating out costs. It will be a brave congress that makes a big price hike as that is uncharted waters and I am not sure what the impact would be.
Firstly I will apologise to you as reading back on my post now I was a bit direct and some of my wording could have been a bit better toned. I felt a bit overly passionate on my points, please accept my apologies. Chess players on this forum is similar to football players on twitter, sometimes best not to type away and hit the enter button and stop for a moment of reflection.
Re the Edinburgh FIDE Congress, I am a bit baffled as I have been told by 2 different high ranking, council members it was losing money and that it nearly never went ahead for this year. I also recall last years prize money being relatively generous 1st+2nd in the Open took away £400 each. I am wondering it is the stand alone tournamentl accounts you are referring to, or the CE accounts for the year, as I am aware CE have good cash reserves and rake in a lot from league fees etc. They probably won't appreciate us getting into this detail as I know they like to keep these matters in-house which I think is fair enough.
I do not argue with what you say however, as if you are on the CE board you are more clued up than myself and I will stand corrected if I have the financial facts wrong. I also have not bothered to look at any minutes for a long time and have seen no accounts.
I think George and myself are on the same page in that we seem to both be looking at the trend and if you can visualise the graph and the decline, that's why we are concerned. I do feel it is not a great time to be a chess player in the East. George is right in a previous point that chess could be considered cheap and relatively affordable, but thats only if its local, i.e. without the high travel costs, accommodation costs and eating out costs. It will be a brave congress that makes a big price hike as that is uncharted waters and I am not sure what the impact would be.